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. SUCCEEDS BEST WITH YOUNG HORSES. Thomas Hitchcock, Who Has Developed Many Good . Jumpers, Describes Methods Used. New York, January 5.— Thomas Hitchcock, who has had remarkable success as a developer of steeplechasers, trains them in a manner against all custom and tradition. His success in cross-country racing is proof of the soundness of his method. He begins with his jumpers as two-year-olds, and with his wife and daughter, all expert riders in the hunting field, occasionally rides his young horses to hounds. Two years ago. with United States army officers judging, lie won the first prize from a large band of horses in the classes of "horses suitable to become officers chargers," with a two-year-old, Cavalier, at the Piping Rock Horse Show. The same animal won other blue ribbons in open classes which required both performance over fences and conformation to win. "Does not your practice of sending two-year-olds over the jumps tend to break them down prematurely V" asked a reporter of Mr. Hitchcock. "Most emphatic ally not." was the prompt response. "I go even further than your question sug-c sts. i break and school my yearlings over the sticks at the same time of the year that trainers are giving their youngsters destined for Hat racing their first try-outs at that game. Even the best of these trainers express surprise when I assure them that my yearlings stand op better under cross-country schooling than the average of flat racers do. I average ewer horses which develop splints and bowed tendons among these youngsters than do the yearlings put to extreme speed for a quarter of a mile in their babyhood. It is the pace that kills, not the jumping. "I am perfectly aware that my experiments defy precedent. Kegular army oncers, hunting men and breeders interested in the development of serviceable horses for officers chargers, for cross-country riding, and for sport, have done me the honor to say they believe I am on the right track. Thev rind my horses are siuud. with good legs and feet, and that they take to jumping as naturally as a duck does to swimming, once they learn what is required of them. Horses broken as yearlings leap into their natural stride and rarely stumble or come a cropper unless rushed at a fence by a careless or overanxious groom or Jockey. "Taught to jump from the time it is bridle-wise, a horse is surer footed and more adept at going over obstacles cleanly than the older horse sent to chasing after two or three seasons at flat racing. You find a pnrallel in golf. A boy will learn the game quickly, thoroughly, and play an almost perfect game before he is fairly out of knickerbockers. A man of my age rarely learns it so that he can compete with the youngster." •You said you thought it was the pace that kills yearlings in their breaking. Is that harder on the young lacer than the jar resulting from the jumping?" "Cnqiiestif nably. The steeplechaser is trained on a field of soft sod: the racer on a made track which must be hard underneath in order to insure speed. Now. a. yearling must do his quarter in 23 or 24 seconds or better to be considered worth training. He stamps, frets and worries at the barrier before he gets a start. Then he literally- pounds his way over a hard track to the end of his trial at top speed. The tK nes of the legs have not been fully formed. Which would naturally be the most trying, pounding over a hard track or jumping — a natural gait for a horse — on a soft field? "I knoyv — for I have tried both — that the quarter run at top speed on a hard track in 23 seconds hurts the bone more than a test over two hurdles in that same distance worked in 27 or 2S seconds. It is the pace that does it. I can play gulf all day and come home tired, but not worn out. If I tried to run a hundred yards in 12 seconds I should be used up and •all in right after the trial. It is the pace that kills. "You may recall the performances of Mr. Clothiers good hunter Meltonere in the spring of 1015. when he won two or three four-mile steeplechases I in succession at the hunt meetings in Pennsylvania. Just before those races he was beaten out of sight in a two-mile race in Virginia against the same horses and with all in practically the same condition. It was the pace that killed. Meltonere had been trained to jump and to stay and not for extreme speed. "I have not yet tried for extreme speed in my jumpers: only for substance and staying qualities. The three-year olds I raced last season over the short courses. Welsh King. Hustler and Sorrento, were beaten because they met superior speed in the i older horses they raced against. In the hunting ■eld, and I believe over a four-mile course, they would have literally lost the horses which defeated them. They were intended for hunting, and I raced them merely for the fun of the thing and to show that horses which had been schooled to jump as i yearlings were as sound and able to stand up under the strain of racing as older horses, many of which had been taken from the course as fairly successful flat racers. "Racing them was only a test of my practice and I theory as to the efficiency of the early training of • horses intended for cross-country work. Kintore, Kehtoh, both four-year olds; Bryndor and Timber • Wolf, five-year-olds, showed they had speed enough i to win over the short courses over horses originally trained for flat racing. They would have won more handily over a long course, and won oftener. They are all - oind. with perfect legs and feet, and went to the race track after having been used by me to follow the hounds during the winter and spring. I think they satisfactorily prove my theory that you i cannot Ix-gin too young with the right sort of horses i to make steeplechasers of them."
